As the capital city of Cairo is keeping busy day and night, ordering your meal or getting your fresh food, or bread can turn out to be a big hassle.
Having a look at how Egyptian startups brought solutions to such an issue, we find many brilliant ideas that are currently competing to bring forth the best solutions through tech-enabled platforms and data analytics.
The food delivery is considered one of the booming sectors in Egypt, especially to a big consumer capital of nearly 20 million. Many startups who do penetrate that market have managed to secure funds and skyrocketed in a very rapid way as they’re creating new job opportunities as well as thriving to meet the diversified food taste of Cairnes.
Digging deep to see how each startup finds its own creative way to meet the end of their users, we at Startup MGZN talked to a number of CEOs and founders of the hottest food delivery startups in Egypt to unravel many details behind their success stories. Here’s what they said:
- Food is good, but homemade food is better. Waleed Abdul Rahman, CEO and founder of Mumm, told us that he started when he found that there is a dire need to access food that we can feel it’s a typical home-made food at a reasonable price during the working hours.
Mumm is the first start-up to build an online platform for female Egyptian homemade food cooks. In July, The startup has secured a fund at $200,000 from 500 Startups, the early stage venture fund, and seed accelerator. Meanwhile, the first fund they received was from Egyptian Venture Capital A15, which was at US$13 million.
The startup has managed to empower female cooks and open new business opportunities to them by delivering their home-made food from homes to users and meet the demand of ordering home-made food at fixed standards at reasonable prices by ordering from the website. - Perfect the supply chain, and you’ll get the best quality of food services. A serial entrepreneur, mentor, investor, Waleed Khalil’s startup Fakahany (which means grocery in colloquial Egyptian-Arabic) tackles the issue of food supply chain and how the long supply chain has a lot to do with the quality and the prices of the final product.
“We pass by such problem starting from its root which is the farmers, as we mainly partnered up with the farmers to bring us fresh, high quality produce, that we can manage its supply until it reaches the hands of the end user,” Waleed added. Fakahany is a tech-enabled service that allows users to order fresh vegetables and fruits and check the prices of the items online via different tools such as a website, an app, or a chatbot.”There are three basics we are focusing on to deliver our commodities: reasonable cost, high quality, and convenience,” Waleed said. Waleed also mentioned that Fakahany’s main goal is to produce hyper-local products that can be served with high quality from the local market to abroad. - Who can say no to mouthwatering and fresh pastries early in the morning? Breadfast is a startup that mainly focuses on delivering fresh morning bakeries to your doorstep every morning. The startup is founded by three tech professionals and serial entrepreneurs: Muhammed Habib, Abdalla Nofal, and Mostafa Amin. Those three decided to focus on direct business-to-customer.
Last month, Breadfast has raised seed investment in a round led by 500 Startups. Mostafa Amin, CEO and co-founder of Breadfast said: “We will use the recent fund to expand our operations into three more areas within the Greater Cairo.”Commenting on the current ecosystem in Egypt, Amin noted that it’s improving as both investors and entrepreneurs started to take risk and began to understand its value, thus encouraging more people to get out of their comfort zones.
“We develop our own technology to optimize the operations cycle starting from the moment the clients order until the client is having the order delivered at his/her doorstep,” Mostafa said.
The startup has a number of breakfast bakeries such as Croissant, Toast, Pain au Chocolat, and Zucchini & Carrot Muffins, in addition to Focaccia, Rye Bread and their Mix-Fruit Danish which are everyone’s favorite.
- This startup is all about that healthy lifestyle. Yumamia is another food delivery service. According to Haitham Gehad, Senior Software Developer, Yumamia is a tech company that provides a diversified cuisine from all over the world from its staff of well-trained cooks, and the number of kitchens that are locating in the areas of operations.
Business Growth Manager Ahmed Fouad told us that the startup’s main edge, versus other food delivery, is that they are delivering junk-free food. You know what that means? Yep, fewer fats and premium quality of ingredients.Ahmed Fouad adds that the delivery of the meal can take 60 minutes, as the client gets a notification once the kitchen receives the order. The client has the option of tracing the deliveryman on the map till the food is at their doorstep. The startup is employing 200 cooks so far in order to run its operation.
Yumamia was co-founded by Belal El Borno & Mahmoud Maghraby in 2014. The startup has also raised $200,000 in latest funding bringing total investment raised to $1.2 million.
- Don’t have time to cook? Worry no more, the MealKit startup has got you covered. This startup delivers the ingredients right to your doorstep. Abdullah Mahdy, the CEO of MealKit says: “The MealKit is a solution for people who want to cook but don’t have time , or for those who get bored with their daily cooking routine and want to try out a new meal for their families.” Abdullah explained that the website has two modules: a daily and a weekly plan; the price for the whole week starts from 350 Egyptian pounds.We don’t know about you guys, but with the abundance of these food delivery services, we surely feel like access to food has never been easier.
Interested in knowing more about the emerging startups in the MENA region? Click here to read more about them.